This comparison suggests that NewSQL databases are as good as or better than RDBMS in every way. This raises my skepticism, as it is rarely possible to get something for nothing.

If there are indeed no disadvantages to NewSQL compared with RDBMS, the sheer audacity of the claim would seem to justify provision of a little more insight into the way this was achieved. Instead, all the authors give us is a very vague notion of "embracing distributed computing architectures" -- whatever that actually means in this context.

May I gently suggest more editing in the future. Far too general comments in the piece, without any supporting evidence other than 'mysterious people said something' (probably on a forum on StackOverflow.com), and factual inaccuracies.

This type of article is the standard poorly researched material that is being published by proponents of each individual type of database. My own area (NoSQL) is of course no exception. Lots of FUD being spread all over. Reading the article it's obvious there is a bias towards NewSQL by this author. Caveat emptor.

Generalisations are very dangerous. In particular those on ACID compliance, OLTP use cases, data warehousing, and grouping all NoSQL databases together (when there are four distinct and different types) are dangerous generalisations to make. Also grouping horizontal and vertical scalability in the same feature row is entirely missing the point of the different approaches.

I would suggest a certain upcoming book should be pre-ordered, but doubt such a comment would get past the admins. 8o)

RDBMS software has lagged in offering easy ways to scale and improve performance. New techniques like database traffic mgmt software deliver the best of both worlds - the data integrity and broad app support of SQL with the high performance of NoSQL. Drops in tranparently and in minutes performs functions such as read/write split and load balancing on behalf of the app - so no app rewrites. Scales single-server deployments with connection mgmt and caching. Easy alternaltive vs. re-writing for NoSQL. Check out www.scalearc.com for more info on this new technology.

I edited this piece and challenged the authors not to fall back on easy generalizations. Some say ACID performance and NoSQL don't mix, for example, but that's not always true. Areospike, for instance, supports ultra-high-speed, ACID-compliant performance, yet it's a NoSQL database. That's just one example. You should also consider that NewSQL databases are, in fact, relational database management systems, but they're taking advantage of relatively new architectural attributes that weren't around when the well-known incumbent RDBMS were invented.

A few years from now when the NewSQL products start to get old, I wonder what we'll call them?

As InformationWeek Government readers were busy firming up their fiscal year 2015 budgets, we asked them to rate more than 30 IT initiatives in terms of importance and current leadership focus. No surprise, among more than 30 options, security is No. 1. After that, things get less predictable.